Suspicion of Deceit (16 page)

"Who?" Gail asked aloud.

—his art had been converted into a political act. Blah blah blah no different from artists who worked
en el servicio de Hitler y Stalin. A
hypocrisy for Thomas Nolan to perform here,
en la capital del exilio
—the capital of the exiles—hiding behind claims of artistic freedom.

"Oh, bullshit."

Then Reyes announced that he would like to invite any spokesman from the opera to appear on his nightly interview program to explain—

"Oh, yes. We'll be right there. You bet."

He closed with a thank you for listening.
"Soy Octavio Reyes, el rrrrrey del comentario, Rrrradio Cuba Libre."

"You're full of
mierda."
Gail hit another button on the radio, flipping it to one of the English-language talk stations, hearing an airline commercial, and she wondered about leaving town until this was over.

She had hoped—obviously in vain—that Octavio Reyes might have given it a rest, after Saturday night. But in shoving him into the wall of the Pedrosas' guest house, Anthony had not said,
Stop the editorials about the opera,
but
Stop calling Gail names.

After witnessing this display of temper, she had come back inside. Not to sit obediently on the sofa— she'd been far too wound up for that—but to pace in the front hall. When Anthony appeared—his eyes dilated to black pools and his cheeks blazing—they stared at each other. And he realized she had seen him. And she knew that he knew.

In the car on the way to her house: "I'm not going to discuss it, Gail."

On arrival as she got out and slammed the door: "And you can go play with yourself, because I'm going to sleep." His tires had screeched going out of her driveway. In the half an hour it usually took him to drive home, Gail stood under a blasting shower crying, then pulled herself together, drank a glass of warm milk with two aspirin, and called him. He wasn't there. Nor was he there an hour later. Or he wasn't answering the phone. She left a message: "I still love you and don't forget brunch at my mother's tomorrow morning. She expects us at ten-thirty."

His good manners, if not his mood, had gotten him there. The circles under his eyes were worse than hers. The relatives had probably assumed other reasons for their yawns. With Karen waiting in her car, Gail had hugged him goodbye. For a minute he held her tightly. Said he was sorry. Not sorry for smacking Octavio around. But sorry anyway. His kiss said he meant it.

Dodging and weaving through traffic, hurrying back to her office, Gail wished she could be in the Pedrosas' back garden again, her hands cupped at her mouth.
Anthony! Make him promise to shut up about Thomas Nolan!

After a while she heard someone yelling on the English station and stared at the speaker. The radio announcer was irate. "Hey, folks. Where are you? Can you repeat after me? I'm in the U.S.A. now. Yeah, that's right. The country that took you in, that fed and clothed you, and you have the
gall
to tell us that we can't go hear any opera singer we want to hear? Okay, I hate opera as much as the next guy. So what? Have you ever heard of the Bill of Rights? We have freedom of speech in this country. Surprise! If you can't grasp the concept, then go home, you ungrateful bunch of whiners. That's right. Go home! Take a raft right back to Uncle Fidel if you don't like it here! If you'd had the guts to fight instead of run away—"

Gail turned it off.

Noticing the sign for Twenty-seventh Avenue, Gail checked the rearview mirror and put on her right turn signal. At a break in traffic she whipped the car across two lanes, barely making the turn. Her right rear tire clipped the curb. She glanced around for a police car. "Sorry, sorry."

There was just enough time for a detour by Felix Castillo's house.

CHAPTER TWELVE

If Felix Castillo had an office—which she doubted— Gail didn't know where it was. She found the street Anthony had taken into Castillo's neighborhood, got lost for a few minutes, then saw a familiar chain-link fence. She paused at a stop sign. The old gray van was in the driveway.

"Lucky me," she said, parking outside the gate.

The house looked smaller in the daytime, an ordinary little stucco box with a ficus tree for shade and security bars over the windows. The gate across the driveway was the only way in. There was a lock on it. Pondering whether the mailman usually vaulted the fence, she heard a steady noise from around the corner of the house.
Thwock thwock thwock thwock. A
slight ringing, as of a bell, accompanied this. She walked along the sidewalk.

Castillo was trimming a hedge of overgrown crotons with a machete. The metal flashed, and the branches with their multi-colored leaves slid to the ground, reduced from the height of a man to waist level. A gold chain gleamed on Castillo's dark, muscled chest. A cigarette jutted from between his teeth.

He saw her, made no sign of recognition, but with a flick of his wrist imbedded the point of the machete in the dirt. The wooden handle shook, then went still. He picked up a faded plaid sport shirt from the grass and put it on as he walked toward the fence. His rubber thongs slapped at the soles of his feet. Gail had an image of toes rolling off if he even miscalculated where the machete would land.

"I got your message," Gail said.

Castillo buttoned his shirt up halfway. He wore brown polyester pants, and Gail wondered if his pistol was strapped to his ankle. He unlocked the gate, then flipped the cigarette butt into the street. "Come inside."

As the front door closed, the lovebird cage on the other side of the white-tiled living room became a blur of fluttering gray wings. The birds chirped and twittered and gradually settled down.

"I don't like to do business in my house," Castillo said. "The neighbors see people in and out, they wonder what's going on. The other night was social, you know?" He waved away Gail's apology. "You want some coffee?"

She thought he might snap his fingers and his young girlfriend would appear to fetch it, but Castillo led Gail into the kitchen, a small room cluttered with evidence of his domestic life—a plastic dish drainer loaded with dishes rinsed and reused, limp dimestore curtains drawn back with matching loops of cloth, a rice cooker with starch clouding the glass lid. By the door, empty beer bottles were stacked in their cardboard carriers. And on the countertop between the door and the window—both secured with bars—was a long-barreled, chrome-plated revolver. Twenty years ago he had lent Anthony Quintana an AK-47 to carry in the forests of Nicaragua. Gail wondered what she would find if she went through his closets.

She sat at the chrome-legged table while Castillo unscrewed the top off a burned and stained
cafetera,
ran some tap water into the bottom, and put in fresh grounds, patting them level with the spoon. During this, Gail told him about the vandalism at the opera, then about the message left on the answering machine. Did he have any ideas who might have done it?

"Anybody. There's no way to tell." Castillo poked among the dishes in the drainer for two espresso cups.

Not wanting to, Gail noticed the old wound. The blade must have gone in between the middle fingers and exited near the wrist, slicing off half his hand. She could not imagine how he could ever have touched a machete after that. She concentrated on finding a place on the table for her purse, moving aside a cellophane package of round white crackers. "On the way here I heard Octavio Reyes's commentary. I suppose you were outside trimming the bushes."

"No, I heard it." Castillo sat down across the table, not getting comfortable yet because the little coffee pot was starting to tick on the burner. The hair left on Castillo's head was clipped short, and his gray mustache reached below the corners of his mouth. Heavy-lidded eyes gave him a sleepy look.

"I heard from my friend in Havana. He can't tell if Thomas Nolan stayed at the Tropicoco on Varadero Beach. That's too long ago. His name was in the newspaper, though, in the schedule for the music festival. Three times. The National Theater in downtown Havana on Tuesday, November 12, then on Friday at the Hotel Las Americas, which is new, and I think built with money from Spain. The next Monday he was at the beach amphitheater. Nolan didn't tell you about those other two, did he? No? The one at the Las Americas, my friend is going to look at again. There was a business conference at the hotel that week, not part of the festival. The story was in the newspaper, and it said that some opera stars from Europe came to do the entertainment. Six of them. Nolan's name was on the list."

"What about Jane Fyfield? Was she listed?"

"Yes. Who's she? I know. The lady that sang in that opera."

"Looks like you saved me the trouble of calling her," Gail said. "The general director hates the idea of an investigation. He says it doesn't matter what Nolan did in Cuba."

Castillo's heavy gray brows rose. "You don't want to hear anymore?"

"Please. I have no intention of dropping it. We'll just have to be discreet."

"Yeah." He gave a soft, husky laugh. "Tony said you were like that. Okay. The meeting at the Las Americas. That's the one that bothers me. The story in the newspaper said that Ricardo Alarcón gave a speech at the conference. That's a problem."

Gail said, "Octavio Reyes mentioned that name in his commentary today."

"That's correct. Reyes thinks Alarcón was in the audience when Tom Nolan sang. Maybe so, maybe he's guessing. Two years ago is not yesterday."

"Who's Ricardo Alarcón?"

Castillo's mustache lifted, showing crooked, smoke-tinted teeth. "Who? Ricardo Alarcón is the president of the Cuban National Assembly. He's very big. It's like singing for Fidel, almost."

"Sorry, I don't know Cuban politics."

The water in the coffeemaker bubbled, the last of it drawn upward through the grounds. Castillo got up and turned off the stove. The glass jalousies were cranked open. Across the small backyard, past clothesline and hedge, someone had a radio tuned to a comedy show in Spanish—a comedian whose diction was garbled past comprehension. Jokes and a laugh track.

Gail said, "That's surprising. A business conference in Cuba. I thought the economy was shot to hell."

"They're trying to fix it. Bring in people with money, make a partnership with the government." Castillo measured several teaspoons of sugar into a glass, then poured in a thin stream of espresso. "It's like the old days, when the Americans owned half the country, but now it's the Mexicans, Canadians, and Israelis—everybody but the Americans. Even the Russians, do you believe that? If a Cuban, a person off the street, wants to go to one of those hotels—forget it. They save them for the tourists. They give away vacations to these businesspeople, and hotel rooms and food, and usually they have Cuban jazz and salsa, but this time—maybe for something different, who knows?—they had opera singers."

The spoon clacked in the glass until a frothy, caramel-colored syrup appeared. Castillo poured some into each small cup, then filled the cups with espresso. He pushed one of the cups to Gail's side of the table. Gail had become used to the taste—both intensely sweet and biting, a juxtaposition of opposites. "Thanks. This is delicious."

He sat across from her. "If you lived in Cuba you would drink coffee stretched with roasted chickpeas. How about that? No good Cuban coffee left in Cuba."

Gail took another sip. "Are you licensed to work as a bodyguard?"

The hooded brown eyes moved to look at her. "Yes, and to carry a gun."

"I was thinking of Thomas Nolan."

"Has he been threatened? Anybody following him?"

"People leave messages at the opera and at the school where he teaches."

"They do that. When you were here before with Tony, I said don't expect violence. Okay, maybe a concrete block through the door, but to attack this man—No. It would be a very stupid thing."

"I agree, but Tom Nolan has been mentioned by name on the radio. Today, Reyes said he was like the artists who worked for Hitler and Stalin."

Castillo laughed. "He invited somebody from the opera to be on his show. Are you going to do it?"

"No, thanks. Listen, Felix. This is for Tom's peace of mind. You wouldn't be with him around the clock, only as needed." She wondered how Nolan would feel about this man. Either horrified or completely safe, nothing in between. "I'm going to discuss it with him first, of course."

Castillo got up to pour more coffee. He lifted the little pot in Gail's direction. She shook her head. "I charge fifty dollars an hour, five hundred in advance."

"Is that the usual rate? I've never hired a bodyguard."

"For you, it's a discount."

"Wonderful." Gail pinched the handle on the little cup and finished the coffee in it. "Felix, this may not be relevant, but as you were talking about investment in Cuba, it came to mind. One of our biggest donors is a man named Lloyd Dixon. He's married to Rebecca Dixon, the president of the board of directors."

Making no indication that he recognized either name, Castillo scraped more syrup into his cup.

She continued, "Dixon owns an air cargo company based in Miami, Dixon Air Transport. Rebecca told me today that Dixon Air does business with Octavio Reyes's company, King Furniture. She said that her husband doesn't know Octavio Reyes personally, but when I mentioned his name to Dixon, I got the impression that he does."

The little spoon clicked softly on the porcelain.

"I'm not saying it means anything."

"But it bothers you." Castillo sat down with his coffee.

"Yes. Lloyd Dixon pretended not to know who Reyes was, but there was no reason for him to lie. All he had to say was, Yeah, sure, he's a customer, and I'm going to tell him to back off."

"Maybe he needs the business," Castillo suggested.

"No. I'll tell you who Lloyd Dixon is—a big, tough, and very rich ex-army helicopter pilot with an American flag bumper sticker on his pickup truck. He likes opera for the blood and guts, not the pretty tunes. He doesn't need Octavio Reyes. He would stomp him on principle. So why isn't he doing it?" Arms on the table, Gail leaned toward Castillo. "I don't know why he lied, and I can't tell you it makes a difference, but Octavio Reyes was in the lie, and I keep thinking . . . it might make a difference to Anthony."